Streamcom Passive

Passive cooling has come a long way and the engineering team behind Streamcom's SG10 passive-cooled casing has been able to cool an RTX 4080 GPU without any fans.

Streamcom's SG10 is a massive heatsink in disguise, that's the only best way to describe this case. The whole unit features an aluminum body and the engineering team has worked to develop this case in a way that can handle some of the highest-end CPUs and GPUs that gamers run inside their PCs.

For demonstration purposes, Streamcom showcased an SG10 unit at its Computex 2023 booth which featured a very nice aesthetic. The top frame kind of reminded me of the fins you'd see on an NVIDIA Founders Edition heatsink and there are glass side panels on both ends. The board & the CPU were mounted invertedly to make a better connection with the tubes that connect one end to an evaporator and the other to a condenser. A liquid coolant flows through the tubes & transfers the heat away from the major hardware components and to the heatsink block that is the nearest to it.

The tubing that connects the CPU and GPU to the case itself is very flexible and bendable despite using a metal exterior. This allows for easier installation and compatibility with a range of chips & layouts.

Since both the CPU and GPU produce the most heat inside the GPU, dual condensers had to be made and each connects with the chip. The frame has been designed out of aluminum for both CPUs and GPUs. We were told by Streamcom that they are working to make sure that the most popular GPUs in the high-end category will be supported by the aluminum frame and VRM heat sinks and the same goes for the CPUs. In its demo, the company used the Intel Core i9-13900K & the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 GPU.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 GPU was running at a TGP close to 300W and at full load, the temps only reached 60C. The CPU was also pulling in over 200W of power and at 100% load, it ran into the 100C+ threshold though the Core i9-13900K is a really hard chip to tame even when using some of the best cooling solutions out there.

Streamcom SG10 CPU Load / Temps (Computex 2023 Demo Unit):

Streamcom SG10 GPU Load / Temps (Computex 2023 Demo Unit):

The Streamcom SG10 is said to easily handle up to 600 Watts but there's also a copper variant that features an all-copper design. The difference between both is said to be minimal and copper can help in certain cases but aluminum is the preferred metal for heat dissipation since it provides a larger surface area for dissipation whereas copper is used in applications that require quick dissipation of heat. The aluminum variant will be priced at $999 US whereas the copper variant would cost around 20-40% higher though its final MSRP is not decided yet.

I/O on both Streamcom SG10 units includes two USB Type-A & a single USB Type-C connector. The power button is also on the front. Overall, the aesthetics of the casing are very nice & you couldn't mistake it for a heatsink unless you look closely enough. In addition to the SG10, Streamcom also showcased its new ZS800 PSU which is an SFF design with an 800W Gold rating.

This is a very small SFX design that comes with two unique aspects, one is the swappable 120mm fan and the second is the hybrid ATX12VO and ATX 3.0 design. The PSU comes with a module that can be used either for a standard 24-pin ATX connector or the ATX12VO connectors.

You aren't stuck with using one particular standard and this gives you a nice option for your Mini PC builds. The PSU also comes with inverted power connectors which are said to make routing the cables easier and also helps to reduce the depth to just 125mm which allows for the 120mm fan.

Finally, those little dials that you might have noticed in the pictures are actually going to be available in sets of fours and will be entirely configurable through software that is in the development phase now. A set of four would be priced at $99 US. These would make for a really nice combo with the Streamcom SG10 PC case.